main perfect like a tile upon the housetop."

So Kusakabe, from the highlands of Satsuma, passed out of the theatre of
this world. His death was like an antique worthy's.

A little after, and Yoshida too must appear before the Court. His last
scene was of a piece with his career, and fitly crowned it. He seized on
the opportunity of a public audience, confessed and gloried in his
design, and, reading his auditors a lesson in the history of their
country, told at length the illegality of the Shogun's power and the
crimes by which its exercise was sullied. So, having said his say for
once, he was led forth and executed, thirty-one years old.

A military engineer, a bold traveller (at least in wish), a poet, a
patriot, a schoolmaster, a friend to learning, a martyr to
reform,--there are not many men, dying at seventy, who have served their
country in such various characters. He was not only wise and provident
in thought, but surely one of the fieriest of heroes in execution. It is
hard to say which is the most remarkable--his capacity for command,
which subdued his very jailers; his hot, unflagging zeal; or his
stubborn superiority to defeat. He failed in each particular enterprise
that he attempted; and yet we have only to look at his country to see
how complete has been his general success. His friends and pupils made
the majority of leaders in that final Revolution, now some twelve years
old; and many of them are, or were until the other day, high placed
among the rulers of Japan. And when we see all round us these brisk
intelligent students, with their strange foreign air, we should never
forget how Yoshida marched afoot from Choshu to Yeddo, and from Yeddo to
Nangasaki, and from Nangasaki back again to Yeddo; how he boarded the
American ship, his dress stuffed with writing material; nor how he
languished in prison, and finally gave his death, as he had formerly
given all his life and strength and leisure, to gain for his native
land that very benefit which she now enjoys so largely. It is better to
be Yoshida and perish, than to be only Sakuma and yet save the hide.
Kusakabe, of Satsuma, has said the word: it is better to be a crystal
and be broken.

I must add a word; for I hope the reader will not fail to perceive that
this is as much the story of a heroic people as that of a heroic man. It
is not enough to remember Yoshida; we must not forget the common
soldier, nor Kusakabe, nor the boy of eighteen, Nomura, of